The Secret’s Out: How to Create Maxthon3 Skins

2010-08-28 04:10:18

There are an awful lot of heroes in Beijing this week. They are the developers and designers who have worked so hard to make things so easy for the rest of us. They are the creators of Maxthon3, which made its formal debut Friday around the world.

The new browser has got tricks up its sleeves to make it faster and to display pages better than any other browser you can name. What? Yes, that one, too. It makes surfing more akin to real surfing—you know, on ocean waves—than you’ve experienced before. And by real surfing I mean you don’t fall off the board and get hit on the head. The browser is practically spill-proof. And it looks as sleek at the Silver Surfer’s own metallic board.

Which is fine if you like metallic sleekness. I’m more a corduroy and jeans kinda guy. That’s why my personal hero this week is abc@home. abc has shared the secret of Max3 skins at the Maxthon Forum. The secret is that the user interface for Maxthon3 is made out of HTML and CSS commands, the same thing you use to make Web pages.

The process is so easy that some Maxthon fans had posted Max3 skins before the sun set on the browser’s coming out. You can find abc@home’s secrets at http://forum.maxthon.com/viewthread.php?tid=75780. And to see what some Max fans have already come up with, jump to the Unofficial MX3 Skin Resources at http://forum.maxthon.com/viewthread.php?tid=77195&highlight=skin.

For his valor and resourcefulness is bringing this secret to light, the Maxthon Blog presents abc@home with the first Unofficial Maxthon Hero’s Medal, shown here. And no, it’s not Photoshopped. Adobe took my Photoshop away.

M A X T H O N
Don’t Surf the Web. Seize it!


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Type the Magic Word and You Get to Read this Blog

2010-08-17 09:34:59

If you want to read this entire blog, fill in your username, the usernames of anyone else living in your household, the breed of dog you have and whether he/she is neutered, and your password, which should consist of an original short story in which no e’s or i’s are used. And you must tell me which one of the Beatles I’m thinking of right now.

That, of course, is a joke. The extremes to which some Web sites are going to, all in the name of security, are not jokes.

The intentions are good, I’m sure. Software designers want to save you and themselves from the expense and loss of time that comes when a hacker breaks into your system and steals the database that catalogs your Marvel comic book collection.

Personally, I’d be happy to distribute about 98 percent of what’s on my hard drives to the American Hackers Association (A-HA!Motto: “We steal your data so you don’t have to worry about losing it.”) All I ask in exchange is that I never again in my life have to enter another password.

The information any hacker could steal from my PC or that any virus could destroy is not nearly as valuable as all the work time I’ve lost trying to guess passwords I haven’t used in months and answering the trick questions that are supposed to prove I’m me. (I particularly find it irritating when the password program tells me I don’t know the name of my first pet.) But worst of all is trying to make out some nonsense word hidden in what looks like a plate of spaghetti dropped on a granite floor in order to prove I’m human.

Some security measures are nothing more than acts of pure sadism. Every time I install a program, I’m asked if I really want to install it, as though I might be sleepwalking and sleepinstalling. Sometime a program tells me I can not do something until I get an administrator’s permission. Of course, the administrator is me, which makes it highly likely I’ll let myself continue. In an office situation, I can see this. But by now Windows 7 should have noticed I’m the only one who uses this computer and that I have administrator privileges.

It’s a wonder that the overzealous security measures spreading like a virus through the Internet haven’t sparked a revolution of computer users armed with pitchforks and flaming torches, chanting “Kill the monster! Kill the monster.”

For a monster is what security has become. In the name of protecting us, computer security has become our tyrant.

But just when it seems like retinal scans would be required before you could read your email, the situation has actually started to improve. If you haven’t already noticed, a lot of sites are adding boxes to check that keep you logged in permanently. And on other sites, if you can’t remember your user name and password, you can just fill in your Google name and password or a combination from some other site striving to become the universal keeper of the keys to all sites.

There are several programs that reveal what’s behind those asterisks and bullets that hide your password as you type it. (I’m the only person in the room; am I supposed to be hiding my password from myself.) To see what you’re hiding from you, try IE Asterisk Password Uncover. It works, and it’s free.

There is hope from other directions. In our next episode, I’ll show you some handy ways to eliminate one overzealous protection and how to automate answering those oh so annoying security questions.

For now if you simply type the date on which you lost your virginity and the middle name of the person you lost it to, you can be on your way.

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Maxthon, The World's Browser

Never Browse in a Straight Line

2010-08-10 20:54:12

We all get the feeling at one time or another that someone’s looking over our shoulders while we search the Internet, someone worse than your boss or spouse. And all of us are right. There are a lot of snoops on the net trailing us like a bloodhound. Luckily, it’s a bloodhound with stuff noise, which is why you can use Tor to thrown him off the trail.

Tor is a product made by Tor Project to mask your identity from anyone who wants to know where you’ve been or where you’re going. The way it does this is simple but effective. Usually, the goal of the Internet is to route your transmission by the shortest path it can find through as few intervening computers as possible. Tor does just the opposite. It routes you through more computers–the more the better.

It’s just like an international spy eluding his tail by ducking into stores and alleyway until someone following him loses sight of him. Tor is not fool-proof. With the right equipment and dedication an accomplished hacker could still probably dig out some information about your digital travels, but it will bamboozle the everyday marketing team, salesmen, and advertisers, all of whom, of course, are much more villianous. Tor’s creators suggest using in connect with an IP address disguise, such as you can set up with Maxthon.

Tor has been used as a connection between journalists and whlistle-blowers, by activists, the military, and, yes, even spies. It’s open-sourced and free. Quick, while everyone’s back is turned, install it and go for an Internet walk.

M A X T H O N
Don’t Surf the Web. Seize it!


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A User Interface Tweaker for Maxthon 3

2010-08-10 02:30:42

Those of you who don’t hang around much at the Maxthon Forum should jetski–not surf–over to the forum to pick up abc@home’s Maxthon 3 Interface Tweaker.

Maxthon 3 isn’t even out officially yet, and abc@home has devised an unofficial tool to modify the look and function of Max3’s menus and toolbars. Here. A screenshot will gives you a good idea of most of the  ways to modify Maxthon 3:

It’s just the thing for the anal compulsive in all of us.  Thanks abc@home!

M A X T H O N
Don’t Surf the Web. Seize it!


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If you have Maxthon, why do you need Amazon’s Kindle?

2010-07-18 20:38:43

I’m not at all sure why a blog named AudioGasms (Motto: “Gasmic Audio News From Around the Web”) has an entry about reading.  But  its admin has written a lengthy piece full of details on how to use Maxthon to read novels onscreen without developing cluster headaches and swollen eyeballs.  Read the piece–as long as you’re using Maxthon.